muslim girlhood

A love letter.

This weekend, I was in Melbourne for the ‘Muslim Agenda’ festival, a really wholesome event that brings together Muslim women from all walks of life. There were women of all ages, from every industry you could imagine, and overall, just so many wonderful people who wanted to connect and bond over both the good and the bad.

Leading up to the event, I was nervous without fully realising it. And I mean, I really didn’t recognise it at the time because my medication for anxiety mostly numbed the feelings, but my body certainly noticed. Although I felt confident and wasn’t nervous about doing my three panels of public speaking (after all, compared to giving a TED talk in front of 100+ people and memorising a 10-minute speech that will live on the internet forever, this felt pretty chill), I still had to unpack the butterflies the night before. Was it the self-confidence? The body dysmorphia? Or was it the socialising? Maybe it was a mix of all three.

The weekend is done and dusted now, and I’m sitting at a cute bagel shop in Melbourne's CBD, enjoying a smoked salmon bagel and an oat latte, when it hit me. My internalised fear of being perceived by my own community and having to bond with Muslim women was what had me shaking in my boots.

This isn’t another post about friendships and trauma, don’t worry. This is about the struggle I faced—and what I unpacked this weekend—that many young Muslim women also struggle with: the challenge of being authentically yourself around the women you should feel most comfortable with, and the fear of judgment and rejection.

Why do Muslim women sometimes feel competitive with one another? Why do we assume the best of others, but not always our own sisterhood? I know there’s a lot to unpack, and I won’t dive into it all here, but it’s an important conversation to be had.

In my teens and early 20s, I always told myself internally that I was too "white-washed" or just overall too different to connect with Muslim women easily. In high school, I often felt left out—for knowing Arabic but not enough Islamic references, and just not liking the same things as the other girls. I was made to feel like I must get along better with the "non-Muslim" girls because they didn’t quiz me on what I did or didn’t know. They didn’t assume I liked the same things they did just because I was Muslim and wore the hijab. They liked me for being Nawal.

The same cycle repeated itself in university. I didn’t have any like-minded women around me and was often the only hijabi Muslim woman in my classes. During breaks, I didn’t make friends because the Muslim girls already had their established friend groups from their Islamic schools.

You’d assume that being an online Muslim content creator would have washed away all feelings of insecurity, especially with my audience being mostly like-minded Muslim women. But I don’t think I processed how the online community can translate into real life, too. I continued to self-sabotage through isolation and never really put myself out there to connect with women from my own community. The few times I did try, I was immaturely left feeling uncomfortable. Whether it was due to my own low confidence or theirs, I would leave those events or catch-ups feeling like my quirks were seen as abnormal—like being half "white" (I know, it sounds silly) and not being celebrated for it.

Looking back, I think we were just too different, but I also thought that all Muslim women should naturally be in alliance simply because we share the same faith and mission in life. In my head, that should have been enough.

This weekend, most of the women I spoke to—much to my surprise—shared the same concerns. We bonded over how we crave the sisterhood we know is out there, and how we either had it in the past or feared trying for it. We talked about how some women, due to their eclectic personalities and hobbies, felt left out of their own community, or how they were scared of feeling ashamed of their faith or not feeling "Arab," "Turkish," etc., enough.

You know I love to blame everything on my frontal lobe still developing, but I think now I have the mentality of, "At least let me try, and if it fails, I’ll know I tried." I don’t think it gets easier, and I don’t think it sorts itself out, but trying definitely feels better than staying stuck in that feeling of loneliness.

I hope we all, one day, feel the love of Muslim girlhood (myself included). I hope we feel such an incredible abundance of it that we teach it to our daughters, and so on, and so on. A love that goes beyond just laughs and connection, but is full of the reminder that we are on this earth with the same purpose. We are alike because Allah (SWT) chose us to be Muslim together in the same timeline, and He even put us in proximity to one another.

A love where, when I fix your hijab, you’ll fix mine. A love that will celebrate your wins as if they are my own and cry for your losses as if they are mine too. A love that will remind you of your deen when you need it, and you will remind me of mine, because paradise could be our forever. A friendship that makes space for empathy and forgiveness, because Islam has taught us to do so.

After this weekend, I can confirm that compliments and words of affirmation from Muslim women feel better than any compliment from a man. I hope there's an event near you where you can experience such genuine joy, and if there isn’t, I hope you find it regardless.

If you have any recommendations for ways Muslim women can connect, drop them below along with your city. Or, if you’re feeling brave, share your handle and a few things about yourself so we can mingle here.

I love you for the sake of Allah.